


Are We Human or Are We Denser?

by looselipsandfreudianslips



Category: The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Stripping, ooc, please read AN before criticizing characterization, slight AU, slightly ooc loki, tease
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-07 23:29:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/looselipsandfreudianslips/pseuds/looselipsandfreudianslips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>*The lyrical misspelling is purely intentional wordplay.  <br/>The Lord of Mischief wanted a game.  This was what he got.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In The Dark, In The Dark, In The Dark With The Radio On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unicorn the Raven King](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Unicorn+the+Raven+King), [Vicious the Loveliest Mun](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Vicious+the+Loveliest+Mun).



> THIS IS NOT LOKI AS HE SEEMS IN THE MOVIES. This story's Loki was inspired by a darling, wonderful, beautifully human version of Loki (frequently called Unicorn, by his friends) played by a darling, wonderful, beautiful human known as Vicious. Her lovely Loki inspired this one, and while he is not the perfect gentleman in the movies, he falls short of the gorgeously broken vulgarity of her Muse. That said, please read on. If this is not for you, kindly turn away.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Intrigue.

He wasn’t sure if it was the pulsing lights or the thrum of bass that attracted him originally, but whatever it had been, he stayed for the view.  Loki Laufeyson, previously King of Asgard and more recently King of Ravens, sat in the back booth of a strip club that had been, perhaps twenty years earlier, quite a beautiful place.  Time and the patina of nicotine that had managed to wear in before the prohibition of such things in public places had rendered the whole place sticky and dark.  Nevertheless, the women were beautiful, and the bartender only rolled his eyes a little when Loki had asked him for a mimosa.

From his seat of subtlety at the far back, he could pick out everything without being hassled by grabby, uninteresting women who would try to lure him into back rooms in exchange for carefully-worded promises and erections he would have to chase away on his own.  There wasn’t much to think about here.  Only plenty to look at.  A parade of women (mostly thin and blonde) had twirled on the metal post firmly rooted in the center of the room.  It was gorgeous, really; they moved like gazelle, spinning and inverting themselves while peeling away layers of flashy (mostly pink) garments, revealing tattooed bodies and bones that nearly broke their skin.  They cooed and fluttered at men worshipfully, promising (mostly dishonestly) sex and adoration.

It seemed to Loki that they could be one creature for the most part, only mutating slightly between sets; one with darker makeup and tattoos of ribbons on her thigh; the next with garish lipstick and studs set like stars upon her cheekbones.  Frankly, though they were pretty, they bored him, and he began to lose interest.  As much he appreciated a good view, he mused as a particularly flexible young woman inverted herself into a full splits while completely nude, there wasn’t much here for him.  None of these women looked like they had a thought in their heads beyond making rent and extra money, likely for drugs.  As much as he liked bass, their music was mostly terrible, too.  One could only hear LMFAO’s I Am Not A Whore so many times before the novelty wore away.

As he stood to gather his coat, the voice of the dj came on, over the skin joint’s speaker like a pathetic voice of god.  “Next up, gentlemen, will you welcome to the stage the mistress of mischief herself, Discordia!”  He paused, midstep, unwilling to even look up and shame himself with whatever bimbo had taken the name of his old godship.  She was likely to be yet another emaciated, uninteresting, over-tanned, bleach blonde too-shy-to-be-a-whore-but-too-worthless-for-a job slut working this job to make ends meet as she slept her way through college.  Instinct screamed for him to leave, right now, and-

The voice of a musician he hadn’t heard before began to grate out of the speakers, smokey and dark.  As the musician began to croon about sex and confessions and damnation, he heard a sharp snap on the stage behind him.   _You can leave_ , murmured a voice in Loki’s head. _You can leave now, and never, ever think about this place again.  A bottle of Kraken, a quick session with yourself in your own sheets to get that redhead’s ass out of your mind....  Never think about it again.  Don’t get involved._

A slow smile crept over his mouth, turning his normally somber face into a rictus and pulling taut the skin around his mouth, making the small, pearled scars there gleam.  The last voice in his head had been the Other, and it had whispered things, too - reassurances and advice, temptations and rewards.  But Loki was done listening to the voice in his head; was done losing on anyone’s account but his own.  He turned on his heel and walked to the stage, eyes to the ground the entire way, and sat on a stool at the edge with his coat across his lap.

_...to do it again.  She’ll make you weep, and moan and cry, to be back in her bosom. To do it again._

The woman, Discordia, was hanging upside down from the top of the pole, removing her top and revolving slowly.  Not blonde, not tan.  Not wearing a pink bikini.  She had on a corset that sat below her breasts (or above them, as the case currently was).  Her hair was piled on top of (below? Her current state of inversion rendered direction seemingly meaningless.) her head and the strobe light made it hard to quantify as anything but dark.  Little metal balls, ends of piercings through various parts of her anatomy, gleamed wickedly in the blacklight, dotting her body like stars.

The top came off and she dropped it, running her hands slowly down over her hips and cupping her small breasts gently; arching her back so it curved like a bow, only the back of her neck and her thighs touching the pole.  Loki pulled his stool up, watching intently and sitting a little closer.  She reached above her head and gripped the pole with both hands and unhooked one shapely calf, clad in black latex and bootlaces, from the other, so that she was dangling.  Surely, she’d fall.  The other women had moved far more quickly, streaks and flashes of color as they moved across the stage.  This slowness plainly required a lot more skill.

Fall, she didn’t.  Stomp, however, she did, and the loud sound from earlier was revealed as she dropped her full body weight onto the shiny, chitinous-looking latex of her boots.  For the first time she seemed to become aware of the money littering the floor around her, and her eyes found her way to each of the patrons who sat at her stage.  Some of them clamored, some of the cajoled, all of them seemed to be begging for her attention.  They stacked bills in front of themselves and she laughed, tossing her head back and moving her shoulders sinuously as her first song faded away.  There was scattered applause and she climbed onto the small ledge that fenced her into the dance area and them, out.

Discordia danced now, a shimmying, sensual, strangely vulpine movement.  As she walked in front of patrons, she kicked their offerings to the floor of her stage with those glistening, clattering boots.  Some of them reached out to her and tucked more money into her meager costume, looking for excuses to touch her and her clothes.  Fishing out his wallet, Loki conjured a few bills into being and tucked them behind his ear.  If she wanted them, she’d find them.

There was tension growing in him that he hadn’t felt in a while.  Mostly, when he wanted sex, he wanted it with whomever struck him, on a whim, and he got it, and he left.  Rarely did Loki have conquests.  If he really wanted it, he could take it, or even form a duplicate and force it to shapeshift to suit his tastes.  This odd creature, though... It was like finding a stalk of jade among many shoots of bamboo.  She was out of place and seemingly aware of it.  Unless it was a sham; some sort of marketing tactic designed to separate her from the crowd.  He reserved his judgement.

Finally before him, Discordia crouched in front of him, peering down curiously.  She made it to his eye level, though, and leaned forward.  All long-limbs and sinuous grace.  She slipped her arms around his neck very lightly and he resisted the urge to swat her away.  Under most circumstances, he didn’t like being touched and there had been several points in his long life that touching him without permission would have been a treason punishable by death.  He had, however, come to her stage, and sat down, and offered her sacrifice in the form of money.  Farbeit from him to swat someone away he had so eloquently called near.

“You’re far too pretty to be here, tall man.”  Her voice was dissonant; childlike and soft, despite how alternative and adult her appearance was.  Unsure of what to do with his hands as she traced the outer shell of his ear leisurely with a fingertip, Loki settled for folding them in his lap.  It sent chills up his spine and he felt his skin blossom with gooseflesh.  She leaned even closer, her bare breasts almost pressed to his chest, and whispered once more.  “What is your game?”  Her scent was like candy and absinthe, burning away at his brain.

 _Is it bright where you are?  Have the people changed?_ The music thrummed, bass too loud, buzzing away his thoughts.

“Does it make you happy you’re so strange, trickster-man?”  It felt like someone had pushed his head down into a bucket of cold water and the chill was slowly creeping down his spine.  Trickster-man. He couldn’t tell if her voice was off-key because she was whispering or if it was that she wasn’t very musically inclined, but it hardly mattered.  Discordia, with a final titter of laughter, leaned back and away from him, gracefully dropping into a handstand and climbing the pole again, this time backwards.  He shivered, just once, and stood to get another drink.  He downed the shot at the bar and left.  As much as he struggled, he couldn’t put her out of his mind or piece together why she’d called him by that old rag of a god-name.  This was going to be trouble, and he knew it.


	2. Oh Baby, Just You Shut Your Mouth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Temptation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little longer, a little rougher. The instability shows through.

Sunlight streamed through the window, pale and wan in afternoon, pacific splendor.  Loki awoke and stretched.  His head felt fuzzy and clouded and he roused himself to at least sit forward a bit.  The last week was a confusing blur; he had gone through his routine, sorting problems and working on the assortment of problems constantly facing him.  Carefully redirecting SHIELD and the Avenger’s attentions; throwing off Thanos from his trail.  He had worked on the little projects that kept his head together, as well; the jacket he’d been collaborating on with a local leatherworking artist was nearly done and the needlework on it was absolutely gorgeous.

The entire time, he hadn’t been able to get that fucking stripper off his mind.  It had been subtle at first, as her memory sinuously wound its way into his brain; a phantom whiff of perfume, the recollection of her quiet, childlike voice.  Then the night time and daylight dreams of her, thin and spiderlike, gracefully moving through his mind.  He groaned and threw his arm across his eyes, having yet again woken from a now half-remembered and vague dream of her pale, thin arms around his neck and the candy and liquorice scent of her.  Slowly, he slipped a hand down over his torso.  Drew the inexorable line down his stomach to his cock, unable to stop himself.  Gripped himself, hard, and started to stroke, leaving his other arm over his eyes and thrusting into his hand with harsh exhalations and, after a time, a sharp groan.

Seven days in a row, he’d woken up hard, throbbing, and incapable of thinking until he’d finished off what the dreams he was having had started.  As welcome a change as it was from the nightmares he usually had, this shit needed to stop.  The thought of her plagued him as he showered and dressed and magicked himself something to eat.  He sighed, running his hands through his hair so it was no longer neat.  Something, no matter what it was, needed to be done about this.  It was simply ridiculous.  He’d go, again, tonight, and talk her into bed with him.  Not stumble in for the warmth; he’d make an entrance, and he’d go later in her shift, and stay for the show.  How hard could talking a mortal woman into bed be, especially one in such a sexual line of work, anyways?

\-------

Tonight she was dressed in green, and Discordia had drawn a crowd.  Her rack was nearly full of men, most of them old and haggard.  There was a quiet jingling from the silver-dotted scarf she had on over her hips.  As she gyrated and shimmied to the beat of some song with very little in the way of lyrics it grew louder until she finally dropped it from the top of the pole and watched it flutter to the stage below.  Loki reached forth and plucked it from the air quite easily and Discordia’s gaze snapped from mid-distance of nothing to his face.  She smiled a little and tilted her head in recognition before continuing what she was doing.

The second song of her set kicked on, a ballad about drugs or bad love from the eighties, and she dropped unexpectedly from the pole, landing amid the piles of single bills on the ground, spread out like so much Joss paper to a goddess.  The loud, visceral snap of her boots on the floor brought the attention of several more men to the stage, which was now very crowded indeed.  Slowly, she began to walk around the stage, talking to each person who offered her money, laughing at bad jokes he couldn’t hear over Bowie crooning about cocaine and shedding what was left of her clothes.

The tautness he’d felt all week was coming to a point.  When she came to him, she sat with her back facing him, her spine straight, and leaned back slowly until her head was resting on his shoulder and he could see the uninterrupted line of her throat, chest, and stomach.  The corset had been forgone for a slave collar and matching bracelets tonight, but the candy and absinthe smell was the same.  Loki caught the kind of candy this time; apples, sickly sweet with caramel.  Fitting, for one called Discordia.

****

“Hello again, pretty man,” she murmured into his ear, and she reached her hands up slowly to caress her stomach, then her breasts.  He resisted the strong urge to trace where her hands had been, knowing he’d be thrown out if he did.  What a strange and tricky game this was, sitting in a strip club.  “Didn’t your mommy ever teach you it’s impolite to take other people’s things?”  The scarf, with its silvery coins, was clenched tightly in his fist, which he had balled in his lap in an attempt to remind himself not to reach up and touch her.

Normally, that comment might have incensed him, but again, he was on her territory in this case, and he _had_ taken her scarf.  “My mother taught me a lot,” he answered her quietly.  Discordia laughed, seemingly genuinely, and turned so as to lay her body along the edge of the stage.  She was laid out before him, now, wearing only boots and a pair of panties so small he could see the outline of her sex through them. Those numerous, strange piercings glinted in the strobe lights.  Her fingers traced the lines of her stomach down to the panties lazily and toyed with the strings that held them on.

Green eyes followed the lines she traced, watching with hitched breath.  The other men around the stage were staring, too, anticipatory to her teasing.  “Did you have something to say other than that, pretty man?  You seem like you have something to say.”  He produced the scarf from under the edge of the platform she was resting on, but held it out of her reach.

What was the stupid guise under which these women were persuaded to talk to men?  It was some insipid, expensive thing.  Right.  “I want to buy a private dance from you.”  Discordia smiled, looking up at him from the pool of hair around her on the ledge she laid on.  She nodded, just once, and took his free hand, guiding it to the tie on her hip that was holding the panties in place.  Loki quirked a brow but held onto the tie.  Her smiled broadened and she looked delighted as she turned and walked away.  Effectively, he was taking off her panties and he cocked his head to one side in a sharp, avian jerk.  Clever little thing.  He leaned in closer to watch her finish up the dance.

\-------

Elise, better known in the confines of The Devil’s Den as Discordia Mistress of Mischief, gathered her tips from the stage floor and tried to get her head to stop spinning.  When she’d dropped into the splits she was pretty sure she’d fucked up her boots and also was completely sure she had fucked up her knee, but the money that had come down?  Totally worth it.

Better yet, the man who she had simply adored from last week was back.  In her head she had called him Trickster because he made her think of the Radiohead song, but the instant of terror on his face when she’d said it had made it a little bit weird.  Not as weird as someone as jaw-droppingly gorgeous as him coming to a strip club, though.

The accent, when he’d asked her for the dance and answered her jibe, explained a lot.  Foreign, possibly.... British?  Danish?  Norwegian?  It was hard to tell.  Likely thought she was a hooker of some caliber, willing to do _anything_ for money.  Not the case, but there was no real point in breaking the suspension of disbelief unless he tried to cross a line.  As she walked off stage he kept his eyes on her the whole time and she smiled at him.  It was hard not to.  Cheekbones like that belonged in a magazine, not a shitty strip club in the bad part of Seattle.

Dump the singles into personal safe, check boots, spin safe shut, put on green hooded top because Trickster has stolen the gypsy scarf, double check makeup, pull on skirt and panties, walk back out.  It was so routine it made her a little bit sick.  After her private dance (lap dance?  Private show?  She wasn’t sure what he’d meant.) she’d rub some tiger balm onto her knee and head home, she told herself.  She had made enough money to go home early tonight and maybe even play with the cats.  For now, though...

Trickster stood at the entrance to the dressing rooms, talking animatedly to the bouncer and holding her scarf.  Elise walked up to him, putting on the guise of Discordia and tossing her hair over her shoulder, and slipped her arm through his.  For a moment he didn’t seem to get it, and he pushed her away.  She raised an eyebrow and caught his wrist, gently encircling it.  Cocky fucker, trying to fight with the bouncer and push her away on top of it.  She had half a mind to let him get into a fight and get eighty-sixed.  He looked down at her, though, and seemed to realize who she was.

“‘Cordia?  Sure you wanna serve this guy?” Tom the bouncer asked her.  She nodded.  “He tried to follow you into the back room.  Didn’t really seem to get it when I told him to wait.” She shrugged one shoulder and nodded again, slipping her arm once more through Trickster-man’s and standing a little closer to his side.  Tom nodded and shrugged in a defeated gesture.  “Get his money first, sweetie.”  She nodded a final time and guided the Trickster man up the stairs to the section of the building that was cordoned off for dances and private shows.

Turning, she reached for her scarf, which he still had in his fist.  He smiled down at her, arrogant and pretty and high-class looking.  He looked like he had secrets.  Maybe that was the reason he was here; some people just liked to tell secrets, and strippers were a lot cheaper than therapists.  Rob Zombie started playing downstairs; Madison was on the pole in some shitty schoolgirl outfit, she guessed.  She shimmied a little, moving her hips to the beat, and smiled up at the Trickster man.

Unexpectedly, he laced his fingers through her so they held hands.  “How much money do I give you to have you dance, just for me, for two songs?”  His voice was low and seemed to throb now that she could hear it.  If she wasn’t at work, it would have made her wonder, but he was likely just drunk.

“It’s fifty for two songs.  Unless you mean a private show?” He cocked a brow charmingly at her.

“What’s the difference?”  He pulled a bill from his wallet, tucking it into her hand.  A fifty.  She guided him to one of the booths and stood in front of him, still moving her hips to the beat of the song.  Those large, strange green eyes followed the motion of her hips and he sat forward in his seat a little bit.  “Tell me the difference between a dance and a private show, please.”

Elise was leaving, she felt, and she was slipping into Discordia.  Before she’d been a stripper she had been an actress and it was always the same feeling of losing herself to something larger and deeper and stranger than she was.  Someone more confident, who ate little boys like the ones who frequented this shit hole, for breakfast.  Someone who had power.  Someone who didn’t study dead languages and read old myths for a hobby outside of thinking about, but never becoming, a tattoo artist.  A goddess.

So it was Discordia who spoke, now.  She knelt in front of this strange and pretty man, her hands on his thighs and tossed back her hair.  Discordia slid her hands over his thighs and up to his hips, lightly pressed her fingers to his chest and finally pushed him so he sat back in his seat, then climbed into his lap.  Discordia who ground her hips against his and reveled in the feeling of his erection against her thigh.  She leaned back so she wasn't’ touching him, except for their hips, and touched the ground with her hands and her hair while still moving her hips to the beat of the song.  Trickster’s hands gripped her ankles through her boots and he was moving restlessly in the booth.

“In a private show,” she began, leaning back up as the first song ended.  Her thin, white fingers with their long, green-painted nails pulled the ties to the hooded top she’d been wearing, exposing her breasts.  Where Elise was self-conscious about being so petite, especially there, Discordia reveled in it.  “...you can touch yourself, and I can touch myself, too.”  She turned to sit facing away from him, grinding her hips into his.  Discordia always got off on giving men dances, no matter how filthy they were.  Truckers, bikers, gangsters.  She loved to tease them, to feel their dirty hands trying to grope at her hips, at her thighs.  Elise didn’t.  She was frightened of their swearing and their roughness.

Elise was actually enjoying this.  The man’s hands touched her hips very lightly, his fingers ghosting over the fabric of her skirt.  “Can I touch you?”  He asked, his voice soft and polite and classy in her ear.  “Until the clothes come off, yes.”  He exhaled laughter into her ear and she could smell cigarettes and chocolate on his breath.  “Naturally,” he responded, grinding his hips forward.  “I want a private show.”  

\--------

The dance had been just a tease; her hips on his and his hands on her hips, guiding her against him to the beat of the music.  The second song, she'd taken her top off and he had brushed his fingers over her shoulders, pulled aside the heavy weight of her hair, and massaged the spot at the top of her back where he could see her tension lay.  Discordia had melted in his hands and the conquest was over.  He _would_ have her.  Tonight, if he wanted.

As he stepped back from the situation, though, he found that he didn't want it.  Not tonight, at least; he liked the feel of this, the bare chase and the feinting each of them were doing.  They stepped into a room that was closed off from the rest of the club.  The sound here was muted and she walked over to one of the small machines that dotted the room and pressed a few buttons.  Other music began to play.  He had handed over the money, a much heftier sum, before they had come back here.  She was still playing with the music machine, a purse and her top and her scarf dangling from one hand.  There were chairs and a couch in the room, likely stained with sweat and semen from the men who had entered the room before him.  There were towels, too, though Discordia hadn't explained their purpose.  What was this private show going to be like, he wondered?  Was it all some sort of a very easily seen through ruse for prostitution?  He doubted it, but the thought that men would pay as much as he had, just to fondle themselves in the presence of these women was detestable.  Not many had as much money to blow through as he did.

"Any preference for the music?" She asked, her voice high and sweet.  "Play something old," he responded and with a slight air of displeasure, sat in one of the chairs.  It was soft and had the same old-velvet feel the wallpaper in the booth he’d sat on while she had ground herself in his lap.  The entire place was verging on being retro while still maintaining an almost palpable air of filth he had to kind of admire.  She put on some music that was faux-old, strange loops of sound playing over and over, a woman’s voice singing old lyrics.  He liked it.

She walked back over to him and looked him over in the brighter light of the room.  Whereas the whole lower part of bar was lit with strobes and blacklights and mirrors and fog, this room had a lamp standing in one corner, blazing a golden and diffuse glow over the two of them.  It reminded him a little of the healing room on Asgard; all calming, heated colors and spice.  Discordia continued to watch him as she danced slowly.  Her top was off and he studied the lines of her body.  Thin, but muscled, and more healthy than a lot of the other women who danced in this place.  He could see bruises on her skin, likely from the pole.  One was blossoming on her left knee, marring the perfect pallor of her skin.  He reached forward and pulled her into the chair so he could look closer at it.

Healing another was second-nature and so small a wound was nothing.  As she bent her knee to straddle his lap, she hissed in pain when he pressed at it.  “What the hell are you doing?” She gasped, trying to pull her away.  He stared up at her, eyes narrowing.  “Shh.”  His grip on her leg tightened and he pressed the magic into her flesh, knitting together the blown capillaries and willing the contusion to fade more quickly than was its nature.  Nothing, to him.  When he looked back up, Discordia’s eyes were wide enough to see the white all around them, her lips slightly parted in shock.  In response, he just smiled and willed her mind to accept it.  Pressing magic to someone the first time made it infinitely easier to do it again.

She half-moved, half-fell into his lap and he pulled her closer.  The smooth feel of her skin edged with the hard latex of her boots was a delight that he took great pleasure in.  With the moment of magic gone from her mind, she trusted him once more and moved softly to the beat of the music against him.  Compliant, cooperative.  Perfect.  Loki leaned forward to whisper in her ear.

“At the end of the song, I want you to sit in this chair and touch yourself.  I want you to show me every single one of those pretty piercings.  I want you to show me everything.”

She nodded with a very soft sound of lamblike obedience and he ground his hips against her slowly, hands raking her harder against him for the rest of the song.  Through the little shorts she had on under her skirt, he could feel her heat pressed against his hardness through the pants he had on.  There was an ineffable charm to this, to restraining himself from simply taking her.  A kind of automasochism.  For as long as he could stand it, he would draw out this game, just to break her.  “Tell me about yourself, Discordia,” he commanded, a sibilant whisper into her ear. “I-I’m nineteen.” So that was why he never saw her anywhere but on the stage.  Not terribly surprising.  He ground himself against her harder and listened to her breath hitch in her chest. “More.  Take your skirt off, too.”  She complied, unhooking the clasp in the back and pulling it off slowly.  He resisted the urge to growl.  “Tell me more.”

Already he could see that he was pressing with his magic unintentionally.  Her eyes were going blank and strangely glazed.  Loki could see in this light that they were gray, not blue like they’d looked under the strobe.  “I haven’t been with someone in so long that,”  she faltered as he pushed his hips against her again.  “...that I’m starting to wonder if I ever will be, again.”  He searched her eyes for a lie.  Surely, she went home to someone, right?  Shared a bed with someone, at least?  There was no lie in her eyes, though. Interesting.

The song ended and faded into the next.  She took a dizzied step back off his lap and he undid his jeans, fully aware that she wouldn’t touch him again.  Her eyes didn’t leave his as she took his place in the chair.  He knelt in front of her and gently positioned her legs so they were spread over the arms of the chair.  “Tell me more.  Who do you go home to, after this?  A pet?  A parent?  A friend?  Take your panties off, too,” he urged.  Pulled his cock out and started to stroke himself.  As much as he’d been doing it lately, there was a heightening of sensation while he looked up at her.  Those thin, small fingers fumbled with the ties on her panties for a moment before she got them off and exposed herself to him for the first time.  Beads of metal gleamed all over her and he could see all her piercings now; one in her navel, one at the tip of each breast and one that gleamed above her sex.  It looked like it would have been a  very painful one to receive.

“I have a roommate... A really close friend of mine...”  Her breath was coming in short gasps and pants as she moved her hands over breasts and down to her stomach, then up and over her thighs. Her sex was gorgeous, pink and soft looking with that curious piercing above it.  Loki wanted to trace his tongue down over the piercing and pull at it a bit, just to see what sound she’d make.  Discordia’s finger’s fluttered slowly, teasing her own skin.  “We’ve lived together since I was sixteen,” she continued.

“Touch yourself.”  He could feel pre-cum at the tip of his cock, beading but not dripping. Slowly, she traced her fingers over the lines of her hips and brushed her fingertips over that tiny piercing. "Stop fucking around," he growled, and she slid a finger into herself with a whimper. The velvet of the chair was dark against the white lines of her thigh and he groaned at the images it stirred in his head.  Discordia, sprawled in the furs and linens of his bed, with his hips buried between her thighs. Meanwhile, she was panting and gasping and pressing her fingers into herself slowly.

Her voice shocked him out of the reverie he had of her in his bed.  “L-look at me, please, please-”  There was desperation in her tone.  Not the cool confident veneer she’d worn before, but something different.  Vulnerable, pink and raw and dripping with sincerity.  Not a trace of the arrogance from before.  Intriguing.  He met her eyes and stroked himself harder as he did it.  In those gray orbs he found need.  Deep, deep need.  She wanted him, wanted this... The ball was in his court, so to speak, and he groaned.  “Fuck,” she gasped, sliding her fingers over her clit, now, and then back up to the piercing.  Though not now, he would have her.  He would fucking ruin her, too, and he knew it.

“Tell me your name.”

“Discordia.”

He rolled his eyes as that one and snapped his free hand up to grip the chair near her face.  She gasped and tried to move away from him and Loki rolled his eyes again, more exasperatedly.  “I’m not going to touch you.  I saw the cameras.  I wouldn’t touch you unless you asked me to, anyways.” _Begged me to.  I will make you beg me to._  “But I asked your _name_.  You know damned well what I meant.”

Complected fairly enough, when women blush, they blush down over the tops of their breasts.  Discordia was such a woman and Loki admired the pink tinge of her flesh, spreading down over her cheeks and throat warmly.  She squirmed for a moment in the chair and he smiled up at her invitingly.  “I don’t tell people my name, but...”  She paused, like she was thinking.

“You would do best to tell _me_ your name, girl.”  She whimpered again, though it was less a sound of fear, strictly speaking, and more a sound of heat.  Strange thing.

“Elise,” she whispered finally, and he watched her for a lie in her eyes, only to find there wasn’t one there. Elise.  It suited, her, like a note of music.

“Touch yourself, Elise.  I know I don’t have you all night.”  Meekly, she obeyed, spreading her legs again.  Loki leaned away and she looked down at him, her fingers still working her sex.  “Come for me,” he murmured, watching her eyes on his cock.  “Come on, don’t pretend, either...”  She was panting and whimpering and the look in her eyes was very, very real.  Loki wrapped a hand around her ankle and savored the feeling of heated skin through the latex and metal and lacing of the boot.  Her panting was getting more rhythmic, now, her hands moving more quickly.  He could tell he wasn’t going to come, but that wasn’t really the whole point of the exercise, anyways.

Her head tilted back to rest against the chair as she built up to her climax.  “Oh, oh god,” she gasped, and his attention focused once more.  As long as it had been, as many millennia since he had heard worship, and Loki still loved to hear it.  “Again, say it again, call me your god,” he told her. Elise’s hands seemed desperate now.  “Oh god, oh, oh god,” she panted and her free hand clutched at his arm blunt little nails digging into his flesh.  “F-fuck,” she murmured and her hips twisted slowly against her hand as she finally came.  He came part way to a standing position to watch her climax, to see the look on her face as she worshipped him not only with her words, but with her body.  That feeling like soma washed over him, better and headier than sex, but less fulfilling.  It filled his head with a pleasant buzz that would last him for days.

\------

The man had left a tip, the room, and a lot of questions.  The tip was two fifties, rolled tight with a piece of paper with a phone number on it, written in neat, angular writing.  She tucked it into her bag at the end of the night.  The room, he had left without cumming, right after she had... Well, he had left early, and left the questions.  There was really no place to start with the questions.  Elise’s head was in a daze as she pulled on her jacket and jeans, tucked her pants into her boots, and made sure she had everything in her dance bag.

The chill of the air on her skin as she walked outside cleared her head a little, though, and she shivered.  Tasha wasn’t there quite yet and she pulled out the little piece of paper with Trickster-guy’s phone number on it.  Fished her phone out of her pocket, a little grudgingly, and tapped it in, just calling him _Trickster Creep_.  She told herself it was after the Radiohead songs, but knew that somewhere deep down, it wasn’t.

Tasha pulled the car around and popped the back door open for her; Elise tossed in her dance bag and the box she kept her boots in, then swung into the front seat.  Quiet music played on the radio, just like she liked at the end of the night.  With a soft clatter from the clutch and a subdued grinding sound from the engine, Tasha dropped the car into gear and reversed out of the parking lot.  Despite the familiar surroundings inside the car (adorned on the ceiling with fake leaves that they had glued there after buying it) and the sweet smell of the little strawberry that hung from the rearview mirror, she couldn’t shake the weird feeling of having actually _enjoyed_ giving a private show.  She actually hadn’t even faked anything during it, and had told him her name, for Christ’s sake.  For all she knew, he could find her.

From the driver’s seat Tasha was eyeing her in an appraising kind of way.  God, she’d told him about Tasha, too... While he was... God. What the hell had she been thinking?  It wasn’t like her at all to cross that kind of line with a customer.  Ever.  She slumped against the window and tried not to think about it. The cool pane of glass on her face felt good; it was a nice counterpoint to the throbbing heat she had running all over the rest of her body.  Ever since he’d come to her stage she’d felt strange and the feeling didn’t seem to have any intentions of leaving.

The car began the ascent up the little hill their apartments sat on top of.  Tasha sighed.  “What happened?”  There was a pretty sizeable amount of exasperation in her voice, but it didn’t cover the bedrock of concern beneath it.  “Did you not make anything?  Everyone has off nights, Lise.”  She drew her legs up to curl in the passenger seat, still trying to sort everything in her head, idly flipping her phone over and over in her hands and fondling the little charm that dangled from it.  The spiky plastic doll, covered in a cactus, with its tiny toy puppy.  Little things.  Tasha had made it for her out of clay and painted it with nail polish.  “Did someone try and... Did someone get tossed out?”  She flipped it open and scrolled through her contacts idly.

She wasn't even sure she wanted to talk about it with Tasha. It would just worry her. She already didn't really approve of Elise dancing; she herself had been a dancer but it had soured her in a manner. Though Elise assured her continually that she wasn't going to dance after she was done with her internship, it had still been hard to convince her.  Situations like this were what she said she was really afraid of, though Elise was pretty sure she just thought the lifestyle would start to get to her eventually.  So far, it hadn’t, and she was pretty happy who and where she was.

They pulled into the driveway and Tasha turned off the car.  The motor spun out and the only sound for a moment was the sound of ticking, cooling metal and the quiet notes of music, still filtering out of the radio.  Elise sighed once, still trying to keep a level head, and then... Utterly and completely failed.  When the words finally spilled, they were a gushing torrent or incoherence, filled with pauses and stops, and she explained the whole situation, starting with the week before and ending with the nagging persistent wish to talk to the man.  It was a long night.

 

 


End file.
